


Ghost Stories

by pajamaprodigy



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Humanstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 01:26:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pajamaprodigy/pseuds/pajamaprodigy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux Captor learns the truth about ghosts and their realness</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Stories

i want to sit in your room and tell ghost stories. i have one to tell now.

more than that, i want to hear you tell ghost stories. you’d be good at it; you liked to read. you always had them too. ghost stories. you knew everything about old places, and old places always have ghosts. you told me that and i believe you.

you used to say that every old city was haunted, that it had ghosts. it wasn’t just that they were old, it was that they had more memories than people. their people were dead, and thus, the cities were haunted. “how many years do the people have to be gone for?” i asked you once, in sort of a jest. “2 thousand? 2 million?” you laughed. i don’t remember the last time you laughed, so i will pretend that it was then. i like to think that i made you laugh, that i made you happy. that makes it a little less not ok.

i wish i didn’t believe in ghosts.

you read one book about the vietnam war and you told me about how when a story is true, its truth doesn’t matter to people who hear it. if something’s real, it doesn’t matter whether people care. you didn't have to believe in ghosts if they were real. they were there. their realness doesn't matter, only that they are there.

did you know how little time we had? sometimes, it felt as though you knew the future as well as you knew the past. that resignation, that i thought was part of the depression, something that had little independent meaning. if ghosts are real, then what else might be?

i mistook the whispers that you were doomed for just my head, lying to me. it wouldn't have been the first time.

i didn't like to talk about having bipolar with you, but that doesn't mean that it was any less real than ghosts. it meant that i knew things about you. about the days when you didn’t want to wake up, about the days that you broke things, about the day that you opened the window on the 7th story. i knew things that people who just read about major depressive disorder and thought they were experts. people who thought that they knew what you were dealing with every single day of your life. people who didn't understand how real it was. 

once, i didn’t believe in ghosts back.

you knew some of their languages too: latin, ancient greek, cuneiform. just a bit, but i thought it made you an expert on ghosts. i would never doubt what you knew the way that i do now.

sometimes though, reading isn't enough. 

you see, ghosts don’t live only in the old cities. ghosts live everywhere, within people. when you died, i learned what ghosts were. i became a haunted house, haunted by you. you are dead and still here. isn’t that what a ghost is? isn’t that what you are? you didn’t know then that you would be a ghost. you thought it would be over, finally, that you would just be gone, like that, and there were no ghosts outside of the old cities. there were no ghosts inside of thirteen-year-old hackers. you fool. you thought that you could know ghosts without having them around you. 

i believe in ghosts

because i believe in ghosts, i have one with me. the ghost of a girl who loved old cities and books. the ghost of a girl who told stories, and wore fedoras, and stood in a seventh story window.

you are my ghost. you are my story.

i want to tell ghost stories.


End file.
